Real, practical wireless power is still more fantasy than fact for most, but Ossia has a new strategic partner that could help accelerate its transition to wider availability and usefulness. Japan’s KDDI, the country’s second-largest wireless carrier, has participated in Ossia’s recent $10 million raise, which will help Ossia spur the development of its Cota wireless… Read More

Japan’s second largest cellular provider KDDI just announced the first U.S. deal for its Open Innovation Fund — a $5 million investment in Fuhu.
The Los Angeles-headquartered startup offers a number of products and services (when Fuhu raised its Series B from Acer, we described it as an “avatar startup”), but the one that attracted KDDI’s interest is the nabi 2… Read More

Breaking into Japan can be tough for foreign companies since it’s culture favors credibility and certainty. So Twilio has just struck an alliance with Japan’s well-respected KDDI telecom who will now sell its cloud communication APIs to developers. It follows in the footsteps of Twilio’s deal with AT&T this month, and could be the model for how Twilio gains local… Read More

MoboTap‘s popular Dolphin Browser has racked up over 16 million downloads worldwide, but that hasn’t stopped them from taking steps to expand internationally.
The company announced earlier this morning that they have entered into a new agreement with Japanese wireless carrier KDDI that will see their browser pre-loaded on a number of new Android handsets going forward.
KDDI is… Read More

Japan, one of the most advanced mobile nations in the world, doesn’t want to be a “cell phone Galapagos” anymore, at least when it comes to payments over NFC. Paying with cell phones is already ubiquitous in Japan, but now the country’s top three telcos (NTT Docomo, KDDI au, and SoftBank Mobile) are trying to switch from the Nippon-only Osaifu Keitai system to the Type… Read More

Quite big news from Asia’s web world today: Japanese telecommunications giant KDDI (US$40 billion revenue) announced [JP] it will buy an 85.5% stake in CDNetworks, the Korea-based content delivery network, for US$167 million.
KDDI says the plan is to turn the CDNetworks HQ in Seoul into a subsidiary and to expand its global business (CDNetworks also has offices in the US, China, Europe… Read More

Japan’s second biggest carrier KDDI took the wraps off [JP] a total of eight new cell phones for the domestic market today. To be more concrete, the telco (which is likely to become the second in Japan to provide the iPhone 5) showed six Android handsets (the Arrows Z is the most impressive) and two feature phones.
Here are all models that KDDI showed today: Read More

It happened in the US a few months ago, and now something similar is about to happen in Japan, too: in one of Apple’s biggest markets, mobile carrier SoftBank is reportedly about to lose its exclusive domestic distribution rights for the iPhone and has to share the market with competitor KDDI.
Nikkei Business Online claims it has learned that KDDI au, Japan’s second biggest… Read More

Latest Crunch Report

It doesn’t happen too often that a European web startup (or any foreign startup, for that matter) makes it in Japan, but Jimdo is one of the very few examples of those that did. After reading an article on the website building service from Germany on TechCrunch Japan a few years back, a team at Tokyo-based telecommunications giant KDDI (over 30 million mobile subscribers, US$40… Read More

Last month, Fujitsu in Japan unveiled the IS12T, announced as the world’s first cell phone running on Windows Phone 7.5 aka Mango. And the country’s second biggest mobile carrier (and exclusive provider of the handset) KDDI au, didn’t lose much time: the IS12T became available today over here (here‘s Fujitsu’s official press release in English from today).
As… Read More

Two days ago, Toshiba-Fujtsu in Japan took the wraps of the IS12T, the world’s first world’s first phone running Windows Phone 7.5 (aka Mango). We were quick in giving you the first specs, but we now have a video that shows the 1 Ghz Qualcomm CPU-powered device in action – plus some more detailed specs. Read More

As the sun just starts to set here on the West Coast, we’ve got a bit of news straight from the other side of the globe: Fujitsu and KDDI (Japan’s second largest wireless operator) have just confirmed that they will launch the world’s first phone running Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) sometime in September. Read More

Kyocera did what a clever cell phone manufacturer whose home market has the oldest society in the world (over 20% of the Japanese people are 65 or older) has to do: it manufactured a cell phone specifically designed for the elderly. While the basic concept isn’t new, the way the so-called Mi-Look [JP] works certainly is. Read More

First, Fujitsu-Toshiba unveiled the world’s first Symbian/Windows 7 dual boot cell phone in May, now this: Japanese business daily The Nikkei is reporting that the same company is ready to out the first handset in the world running on Windows Phone Mango, the mobile OS that Microsoft officially unveiled in May. Read More

Do you miss the feeling of pressing physical buttons when you touch icons or letters on a smartphone touchscreen? Japan’s second largest mobile carrier KDDI is working on a display that recreates exactly that “clicking sensation” by combining vibration with a pressure sensor. Read More

We’ve all got iPhone mania in the Valley, never mind that Apple tracks our every move and won’t explain why or that AT&T users can’t actually make calls.
But in Asia– and much of the rest of the developing world– the anticipated mobile giant is Android. Android phones are just starting to hit Japan and China, and a flood of cheap new models are expected to come… Read More

When Japan’s second biggest mobile carrier KDDI announced its winter and spring line-up back in October, the company also showed a very Kindle-like e-reader. Dubbed Biblio Leaf SP02, the e-ink device was introduced with an open price model, no exact release date and just a few specs – until today. Read More

Japan’s second biggest telecommunications company KDDI is working on optimizing HD video streaming quality on smaller screens. Specifically, KDDI’s R&D Labs are working on making it easier to view HD content originally intended for larger screens on mobile displays. Read More

Last week, we reported about the new cell phone line up of Japan’s second biggest mobile carrier, KDDI. The company unveiled no less than 19 new handsets, and among those, one model stood out because of its unique design: the aptly named X-Ray. Read More